


Reflections

by iamsonny_j



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Happy Ending, Team as Family, Trans Jesse McCree, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 19:36:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12895230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamsonny_j/pseuds/iamsonny_j
Summary: Jesse McCree is a transman. These are snapshots of his early experiences with Overwatch, featuring coming out, finding a family and finding himself and realising that not everything has to be struggled with alone.





	Reflections

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic I wrote for my bff, Nines, who made me the most perfect trans McCree art, which you can find a digital version of here: [LINK](http://tealtumbleweed.tumblr.com/post/165546403828/looking-good-son-digital-version-of-a-drawing-i)

It had been a long time coming, and then it had happened all at once. For so long Jesse’s life had been all about just surviving and getting to the next day. It took a lot of adjusting when he found that he was with people who cared about his well being, to the point where it was still sometimes too much to handle, and he genuinely questioned if he deserved any of it at all. He had found acceptance and no longer had to hide...It was a feeling that would never stop being overwhelming.

Deadlock wasn’t the place to be someone like him. Lucky enough there was some good in not being old enough to even be out of high school and that was that it made it easy to convincingly pass. Life had at least blessed him with height and a voice that wasn’t too high pitched to hide. The rest he got through with good old fashioned cleverness. Still, it hadn’t been easy.

When Reyes finally dragged his sorry ass into Overwatch, Jesse was mostly skin and bones with only a little lean muscle to hide it. He had too much fight, not enough sense, and a hurt inside that held the smallest hope that this would be the way out. 

At just nineteen years old he smoked more that he ate, and his T supply (the little that he could get hold of and ration) had run dry three months previously. Until that day he’d had no reason to believe he would make it to his twenties anyway, so why waste time and resources on being healthy.

Overwatch hadn’t been easy to begin with. Trust had been hard to come by and caution was a tough habit to break. He got through the initial medical checks with a combination of charm, stubbornness, and carefully thought out threats. When he was given a pass as a healthy, if a bit malnourished, teenage male, Jesse considered his job well done. He hadn’t been the youngest member of Deadlock for nothing, and he knew how to get by and survive.

Eventually even that hadn’t been enough, especially somewhere like Overwatch where everything was so…regulated. Fortunately, like every position he’d found himself in since arriving, it wasn’t the life or death situation that a tough life had lead him to believe it would be.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“You are a transman, Jesse McCree,” Angela said, as Jesse sat on the examination table during their first meeting.

Jesse felt his world shift and a lead weight of panic pass through him. The urge of fight or flight was buzzing under his skin, and he didn’t notice the white knuckle grip he had on the edge of the table until Angela placed a gentle hand over his and focussed his attention back to the there and now.

“Jesse, it’s okay,” She said calmly. 

It would be fine. This wasn’t Deadlock. He was safe. It would be okay. He gathered his thoughts and took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself.

“Ya gonna tell on me, Doc?” he asked quietly.

“It would break the oath I took as a doctor to do so, and it is only the business of others if you choose it to be.”

“I don’t…” Jesse paused, waiting for the anxieties and thoughts to try to find some sort of order in his head. “Would I be accepted…Would it change how people saw me if I was open about it? I’m not talking just acceptance here, I know the laws. What I’m saying is, I’m a man. I don’t want no song and dance or doubting ‘bout it,” he hesitated before continuing hesitantly, as if voicing the fears would make it real, “I don’t want things to change when I finally got something maybe good.”

“I have been here a while now. These are good people; difficult, but good. In my experience, the only person you have to fear is yourself.”

“Okay, that’s okay. I’ll think on it.”

“In the meantime I’m guessing that any testosterone you’ve been taking has been unregulated and intermittent, at best.”

“Trust me, Doc, I did my best to get what I could,” It had been already too long now without it. Jesse remembered the distress of last month and having to steal menstrual supplies from Ana. It was the most depressed he had been since arriving at the watchpoint and he was pretty sure that at least fifty percent of those four days he spent in the shower, as if that would somehow wash the feelings of wrongness away. Even Reyes gave up on him for a few days.

“I’m sure,” Angela agreed. “So, I would like to run your bloods to check your levels, along with a few other things, and if everything is as it should be then we can look at getting you set up on a regular dose…If that is what you want?”

“Yeah, absolutely, that’s what I want!”

“Good, now roll up your sleeve while I prepare what I need.”

Jesse did as asked, and several phials later Angela had what she needed for sufficient testing. 

“I would like to follow up with you in 48 hours, once I’ve had a chance to analyse your results and look into what some of you options might be. Obviously you understand that I can do all the analysis here in the lab, but I will need to liaise with an outside pharmaceutical to get the hormones. This will only be seen by me within Overwatch. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jesse nodded a little over enthusiastically, and at this moment, with his mind racing, he probably would have agreed to anything that needed to happen to make this a reality. “Yer a real angel, Doc. I mean it.”

“I am simply doing my job, but I appreciate the thought,” she said, smiling softly. “I would just like to remind you to carry on with the diet plan you were placed on, as you are still slightly underweight for your height and age,” she made a quick note on her tablet. “One other thing; you have become close with Gabriel?”

“Yeah, ya could say that. Been looking out for me real good. Y’know, above and beyond most bosses I’ve worked under.”

“If you choose to come out to no one else, I would still consider telling him. Gabriel has already grown very fond of you and he’s concerned that you aren’t happy and settling here.”

“He say that to ya?”

“In passing. He is not as good at hiding sentiment behind professional concern as he thinks he is.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jesse came out to Gabriel two days later. Like every situation in his life, it started out as a bit of a mess.

He was distracted and restless through knowing that he would be meeting with Angela later that afternoon to go over his T options, if everything was okay with his bloods. It couldn’t come soon enough. The wait was getting him all on edge and it put him in a mood where he didn’t know if he wanted a fight or a hug, and it sucked. 

On top of that he’d ended up rolling in late for training, and his stress and anxiety kept building as Angela’s advice about coming out to Gabriel played heavily on his mind. Gabriel seemed determined to push him to breaking point physically today too, and Jesse was about ready to walk out on it all, consequences be damned.

“Where’s your head at McCree? Am I wasting my time today?”

“No, boss, just got a lot on my mind,” Jesse said, with a bit more bite than he’d intended.

“You want to talk about it?”

Jesse sighed, but it did nothing to ease the tension inside him.

“You ever feel trapped in your own skin, like it’s holding you back?”

“I’m a black Latino who grew up in LA; of course I have. Then I learnt to be better than what people expected of me because no one else was going to come and break those traps for me.”

“I’m transgender,” Jesse said, without hesitation in that moment. The two beats of silence that followed felt like a lifetime.

“Okay.”

“That all ya gotta say, boss?”

“Well, I’m surprised, but not shocked. You carry yourself differently to most young men I’ve worked alongside. I put it down to you overcompensating for being an underweight young punk with something to prove; I was just never sure of what that something was.”

“Just cause I ain’t got the kit below the belt don’t make me any less a man that you!”

“Hey, that’s not what I meant,” Gabriel looked to be reaching out to place a hand on Jesse’s shoulder, but thought better of it, and withdrew. “Look, I don’t have any idea what it feels like to be you, and I ain’t going to lie and tell you that being born a man hasn’t given me privileges, because it has, even in this present time. I will say that I’ve known transmen in the army and even fought alongside a couple, and some of them were the damn best. If anyone had even thought they were lesser men for being born without a dick I would have come down so hard on their asses they’d still be licking their wounds today. You understand me, kid?”

“Yeah, boss, I get ya,” Jesse said quietly. He didn’t know what else to say. Every thought he’d had about coming out had been built on fear of being discovered while in Deadlock. To now have something completely different was overwhelming.

“Listen, McCree, I’m trying to say I want to help you, if that’s what you’d want?”

“Not really had to come out and tell anyone before. Did my damn best to keep that from happening. Always enough to get by. Never had the luxury of help.”

“That takes a lot of guts and intelligence.”

“Ain’t like I had much choice.”

“You have now. It’s all up to you. If not today, then whenever you decide.”

Neither spoke for several minutes. Jesse let the same thoughts and concerns turn over and over in his head, until he realised that there was only one thing that really worried him right now.

“I don’t want ya to think differently of me.”

“Of course not. Look at you; all I’m seeing is the scruffy pain in my ass whose been giving me attitude since day one; nothing changed there,” Gabriel said with fondness and a nudge to Jesse’s shoulder.

Jesse smiled, the first genuine one in almost two days, “Can’t let you have it too easy, boss, life would get boring real quick.” 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When they finally finished training, which went considerably better after that, Gabriel stopped Jesse before he could escape off for a shower.

“Are you binding with bandages?”

“Yeah, sure am.”

“Well stop. That shit is really bad for you.”

Jesse felt the coldness of shame run through him, only to be quickly overtaken by the need to fight. He needed to bind. He couldn’t get through a day without it now. He was about to say as much, before Gabriel finished speaking.

“Tomorrow we’ll get you kitted out with some proper binders. As many as you need.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It had been a year. A year of getting healthy. A year of getting fit and eating right for the first time in his life. A year of being on a continuous dose of testosterone, never having to again worry about when or where the next shot would come from and if it was completely safe. A year of learning it was safe to be open and ask for what he wanted. A year of trusting enough to accept support. A year after finding a home and a family.

Jesse stood still in front of the mirror, although it was hard to keep the tremors of anxiety and anticipation from showing in his hands. 

This was it; remove the biotic dressings from his chest and he’d see his true self for the first time. 

He was terrified. What if it didn’t help? What if it didn’t make all the difference he hoped for? He’d made so much progress in his physical and mental health, it seemed like getting top surgery was the last step to comfort that he’d always struggled to find.

As if sensing Jesse’s hesitation, Gabriel stepped into the line of reflection and placed a hand of support on Jesse’s shoulder.

“You’ve got this, kid.”

With eyes focussed away from the mirror and on his task. Jesse carefully peeled away the dressings one at a time. Underneath were two thin pink lines to show the remains of two perfectly healed incisions, that only two days ago had been parts on his body that had caused him so much distress. After a couple of steadying breaths he braved looking up at his reflection in the mirror.

There he was, for the first time, body as it always should have been. For several moments all Jesse could do was stare, and then everything caught up with him all at once. Relief. Thanks. Peace. Comfort…Sadness for what had been. Happiness for what now was. He had got this far, and won.

Feeling his eyes burn at the first sign of tears, as emotion over took him, Jesse looked away from his reflection and hid his face in his hands. 

Gabriel seemed to understand and said the only thing Jesse needed to hear.

“Looking good, son.”


End file.
